Regarding Reich, I think it is safe to say that the accessibility of Reich’s ideas is what makes him so popular among so many diverse groups of music listeners.  The Who’s Baba O’Riley for example opens with a synthesizer motive that is reminiscent of some of the phasing found in Reich’s music.  Other contemporary artists have been known to use his ideas, and it seems that music students and music patrons the world over are constantly amazed by his music–or the process of his music.  For all its simplicity, performances of Reich’s music requires great skill, concentration, and musicianship.

Try writing a piece using some of the concepts defined earlier in the blog or styled after Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain. I did this about a year and a half ago, the resulting Noon a portion of a presentation on Avante Garde Music.  The title, palindromic in nature, is for piano and marimba and explores minimalist components in a palindromic form.  I found the composition process exciting, but difficult at times.  Credit was immediately dished over to Reich and other composers who have made careers in such areas of composition.  Perhaps it is the simple act of doing that helps us appreciate the complexity of the process.  And to his credit, Reich has made the process a simple act of listening.

This idea of phasing is simple with electronics, as it is fairly straight-forward to calibrate technology to produce a desired result.  However, Reich was at one point convinced this could not exist with acoustic instruments played by humans.  As another experiment, he decided to act as a “second tape recorder” and after recording a pattern that would eventually become Piano Phase he started in unison with the recording and slowly tried to get ahead of it.  The experiment ultimately worked, the outcome being the realization of the ability of humans to phase rhythmically, an initially unnatural instinct for most of us.

Ultimately, phasing takes on a similar life as the most basic canon.  In its most basic form, a canon consists of a musical idea followed by a second version of itself offset by a chosen number of beats.  Likewise, the phasing in Reich’s music, or in any music where this technique is employed, begins with a basic musical idea and is followed with a second version of itself gradually progressing towards a desired product (i.e., a pattern offset by a sixteenth-note, eighth-note, etc.).  The difference lies in the method by which each is achieved:  canon in two-measure phrases is inherent in the composition, and phasing is achieved through changes in tempo gradually over a period of time.

The video below illustrates the concept of phasing both musically and visually.  This choreography set to Reich’s Piano Phase is outstanding and as you watch and listen, you begin to understand the idea of time being a construct.  Within that construct things are set in motion, and given proper life within the construct, will fall in and out of perfect relationships with each other (i.e., phasing).

Some Reading On the Topic

An excellent article by Paul Epstein appeared in The Musical Quarterly in 1986.  Entitled, “Pattern Structure and Process in Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase,” it not only dissects the formal process of creating the phases, but also explains the phenomenon of phasing in terms comprehensible by most with any sort of musical training.  It is available online through JSTOR (you must have access through a university or other scholarly organization), and the citation follows below.

Epstein, Paul.  “Pattern Structure and Process in Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase.”  The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 4. (1986): 494-50.